Filip Hrgovic was more than ready to pay tribute to Joe Joyce after his unanimous decision win over the British heavyweight on Saturday night in Manchester.
Most boxers are, nowadays, very much in the Floyd Mayweather “helluva fighter” tradition. But this was different. Hrgovic strung together adjectives much like he had done punches a few moments earlier.
The giant Croatian’s precise combinations off the back foot were the defining feature of a contest where, for long periods, it felt like he couldn’t miss the dutifully marauding Joyce.
“This guy is like steel,” Hrgovic said in the ring afterward. “I couldn’t believe he took all these shots. He’s a really, really tough guy. He’s a beast, he’s very strong.”
The weekend loss was Joyce’s fourth in his past five fights. He was undefeated prior to this alarming slump. At 39, with a decorated amateur career behind him, it is increasingly widely assumed that years and a front-foot, take-one-to-land-one style have caught up with the popular Londoner.
MORE: Joe Joyce vs. Filip Hrgovic full card results, highlights as ‘El Animal’ gets bounce-back win
As such, in-ring interviewer Ade Oladipo couched his questions to Joyce in a caring, respectful tone that sought to gently nudge his interviewee toward contemplating his future in the sport. It was more than a little jarring when Joyce clearly had no interest in conversing on those terms.
“Are you not entertained?,” he boomed affably, echoing Russell Crowe’s famous line from Gladiator. Joyce also jollily informed Hrgovic that it was “1-1,” referencing their meeting in the amateurs that Joyce won. That took the amount of people in the Co-op Live Arena clamouring for a rubber match to roughly one.
But he was right. The crowd were entertained. Joyce is never in dull fights. His fearless approach compels opponents to engage. On the other hand, echoing the high-stakes duels of the Roman age, the entertainment is witnessed with a knot in the stomach. Those of us paying, watching, and writing now have seen how grave the consequences can be, especially for a slowing, fearless heavyweight with a porous defence and a granite chin. Because it’s not granite or steel. Joyce is not a beast, just flesh and bone. A man who deserves your respect and gratitude, not a future as a punchbag and a punchline.
So, his decision is simple…right?
Why don’t boxers retire?
Requiem for a Heavyweight was a 1956 teleplay written by Rod Serling that later became a Hollywood movie starring Anthony Quinn, Jackie Gleeson, and Micky Rooney. It focused on a once-promising heavyweight boxer who suffers a heavy beating at the end of his career from a young prospect.
In the 1962 movie, the up-and-comer was played by a certain Cassius Clay. Almost two decades later, Muhammad Ali made his last, forlorn trudge into the ring against Trevor Berbick, his health and speech already noticeably compromised by his iconic deeds.
Everyone knows the wince-educing tale of the heavyweight who goes on too long. In the movie, Quinn’s character conformed to and helped to embed some of these stereotypes. A down-on-his-luck slugger, short of cash, and who knows nothing else but the fight game.
Plenty now look at and talk about Joyce with this sad story in their eyes, but “The Juggernaut” is not your typical fading heavyweight hero. Far from it.
A latecomer to boxing at 22, Joyce was a prodigious sportsman across various disciplines as a youngster, turning his hand to swimming, rugby, athletics, and martial arts. He wanted to be an Olympian, and the sweet science gave him a path to that dream. He won a super heavyweight silver medal at the Rio Games in 2016 after a controversial final defeat to France’s Tony Yoka. Hrgovic won bronze.
Before embarking upon this path, Joyce completed a degree in fine arts at Middlesex University. He counts Pablo Picasso as a hero alongside Ali. This bohemian streak comes from his parents. Joyce’s father was an art teacher and oversaw his first oil painting at age seven. His mother practiced pottery.
However, young Joe missed his university graduation ceremony as he travelled to the Shaolin Monastery in China to study martial arts, practicing Shaolin kung-fu four times a day. Early in his amateur boxing career, he spent three weeks training in Cuba and later had Ismael Salas from the celebrated boxing nation running his corner.
“In Chinese martial arts, what I learned from doing Shaolin Kung Fu is they usually trained one form for the whole year. Then the next year, they learn application for doing that form, while they’ve been doing these sequences of movement,” Joyce said in a 2023 interview with The Sporting News, where he revelled in discussing the finer details of his craft.
“That’s what I like about my Cuban connection. It’s that real detail, the biomechanics that Salas teaches, how to throw the punch correctly and using your body and using the right mechanics of throwing punches.”
MORE: Read Joe Joyce’s 2023 interview with The Sporting News in full
Will Joe Joyce retire from boxing?
We spoke prior to his first defeat to Zhilei Zhang in April 2023, when the lumbering southpaw with deceptively fast hands punched Joyce’s eye closed in London. In an instant rematch five months later, Zhang breached the Brit’s previously impenetrable punch resistance third-round KO. A comeback win over Kash Ali followed before the Chisora and Hrgovic losses.
“I get paid. It’s a job, I enjoy my job,” Joyce told Box Nation after the Hrgovic fight. “The flow of boxing; you have your fight, you have a bit of time off, you keep in training and you go again.
“I like training. This is what I’ve been doing since I was little, being in sport. Doing, swimming, martial arts, rugby, athletics, cheerleading in the States… I’ve done everything. I got into boxing late and I’ve done well.
“It’s unfortunate it wasn’t my night tonight, but I can come again. I’ve still got a few more years, I believe.”
It’s a dangerous belief and one it feels hard to accept from such a gifted, educated man who has the clear capacity to do so much on the other side of the ropes. Why risk more damage?
Well, outside of deploying a ramrod jab, timing has not been Joyce’s friend. Ruing this might continue to fuel his fire.
Six months after his first loss to Zhang, Turki Alalshikh and Saudi Arabia’s General Entertainment Authority staged their first boxing show when Tyson Fury faced Francis Ngannou. Joyce would have been a main player on the heavyweight stacked cards to come but was on the outside looking in.
Zhang joined the party, beating once-mooted Joyce foe Deontay Wilder before losing to fellow Wilder conqueror Joseph Parker. The last man to beat the resurgent Parker? Yep, Joe Joyce, who also dealt Daniel Dubois a maiden career defeat.
That’s current IBF heavyweight champion Dubois, who demolished Anthony Joshua at Wembley last September. That’s Joshua, the Olympic golden boy in a tight 2012 gold medal bout four years before Joyce had to settle for silver.
Joyce need only look to ringside on Saturday night to fuel his belief. Alongside Dubois was a who’s who of heavyweight talent. Fabio Wardley and Jarrell Miller were in town to promote their summer stadium fight in Ipswich, as was Wardley’s old foe Frazer Clarke, who saw another former Olympian, Delicious Orie score a routine win on his pro debut. Clarke called out freshly crowned British champion David Adeleye
Dillian Whyte, who was initially slated to face Joyce before having to withdraw due to a finger injury, was a few seats down from undefeated rising star Moses Itauma. All fighters on different chapters, scoping out the next possible dance partner — the next potential snake or ladder – in their story.
Dubois is operating in a different stratosphere now but has that score to settle. Get back in the win column, and every other man listed would view “The Juggernaut” as a worthwhile opponent. For his part, Joyce cited Chisora’s resurgence to position himself as a potential mandatory challenger to Dubois, having also been urged to retire for years.
None of this is to say that Joyce should continue boxing — it’s to outline how hard it might be to walk away and how easy it is to build the logic to stay. Joyce is an impressive, gifted athlete whose gifts appear to be failing him in the most unforgiving and dangerous sport to which he’s turned his hands. Over the crucial coming weeks and months, it is to be hoped that he has similarly impressive people around him.
